Palm has posted information regarding Windows Vista compatibility with its devices. The Palm Desktop software, used by Palm OS devices, will install and operate on Vista. Hotsyncing and PIM synchronization should work according to Palm's Vista Information page.

Some items are not currently compatible with Windows Vista. These include certain carrier provided Dial-up Networking (DUN) software, Palm Quick Install and the LifeDrive mobile manager software. Palm says to check back for future updates on these issues.

RE: Why I use Palm

Actually from what I have read elsewhere, Vista has a Mobile Device Center built in that replaces ActiveSync. So it's not like they haven't made a compatible replacement, they just aren't using a separate syncing system like they were before.

That being said, there is already an update to the built in Mobile Device Center available, so I guess they didn't get it all right by the release either!

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

It's not just Palm. Companies are dropping the ball LEFT & RIGHT in regards to Vista.

Is it arrogance? Laziness? Greed? Stinginess? Ineptitude?Likely a combination of all those factors.

I'd like to rant here for a moment (Ryan, forgive me)...

In regards to Vista, if you've got the horsepower to run it, it runs really well and is a big leap over XP. The most shocking thing is HOW poorly companies are handling the rollout. My fairly decent ($200+) Lexmark laser printer that I bought brand new @ Staples less than a year ago (and then expanded its internal memory) is UNSUPPORTED in Vista. I mean they have a generic driver but you have no control over any printer settings with it. I have not yet tried to get it to work with the older XP drivers but I am really hoping they'll work because the printer stuff wasn't really changed much from XP to Vista. Lexmark claims they have no plans to release a downloadable driver (ever) for that particular printer (or any of their older models for that matter).

Then our high-end HP business inkjet printer at work (with IR and duplexing, not a cheap home throwaway unit) aren't supported other than with the lame built-in Windows drivers. Same goes for our high-end HP flatbed scanners. Heck, even our <1 year old color Laserjet at work doesn't have drivers ready for download. HP is very vague but throws out dates of January and July '07 for availability!

My Acer laptop (Core Duo CPU, 2gb RAM, Radeon X1600 video) has a Vista-ready sticker on it yet Acer's released ZERO drivers for it. So it's running in a bare bones default driver config. Fortunately Ethernet and wi-fi was supported by the drivers on the Vista DVD. All I've been able to install are Intel's .inf package for Vista as well as my cordless mouse drivers! I am without Bluetooth, my multi-card reader, any real form of hardware accelerated video, sound or my integrated webcam.

Also, my Roxio CD/DVD burner package (Easy Media Creator 9) touts itself as being XP compliant yet they've released no updates or support items for it other than saying they will address the matter on January 30th. Hello!!?!?!

I am pointing the finger squarely at companies like Logitech, Acer, HP, Lexmark, Palm etc. for not taking this seriously. it's not like they have not known Vista's release was immiment. Of course, I'm not surprised at all by Palm sticking their head in the sane on this one..but I really expected better from the industry heavyweights listed above.

I mean, Windows is a necessary evil. I haven't seen this kind of ineptitude since the dark, dark days of the Win 3.11 to Win 95 transition. I had thought the industry had progressed beyond this kind of immaturity and nonsense. This is going to end up being a considerable blow to the Wintel community and cause a fair number of users to defect to Mac/Linux or simply revert back to XP. And all of the confusion regarding licensing/transfers, activations etc. is another black eye for M$.

I really feel M$ should have prodded companies harder to get their acts together and they should've shelved Vista for another 6 months.

So that we can close out on a positive note: ATI/AMD has been a model of what TO do. They have had stable Vista drivers out for a while and their most recent Catalyst drivers IMPROVE performance over Win XP in the gaming benchmarks. I suppose I'd buy a new PC pre-loaded with Vista now if the price was right...but I like to build my own desktops. But not offering drivers to owners of hardware for sale on store shelves TODAY is just pathetic. I feel sorry for all of those poor sods walking out of BestBuy with a shiny new PC with Vista preloaded and a shiny new multifunction or laser printer that has ZERO Vista capabilities other than the lame-o Vista default driver.

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

Kris, just remember as you are ranting that this is all about the almighty dollar. What will motivate the hardware companies to make an effort to update old hardware drivers to be Vista compatible? Hey, you just bought a new OS; why not buy all new hardware to go with it? And the "Vista-compatible" sticker only means that it will run; no one promised how well. ;-)

When I bought my laptop last summer, I did notice that is was "Vista-compatible", but from everything I had read about Vista up to that point, I thought it might not be realistic to upgrade the OS from XP to Vista even though it was supposedly compatible. Now I'm quite sure that I never will. But I doubt that will bother me in the end. It is a work machine and the "supposed" productivity advantages of Vista are simply not compelling enough for me to put out the extra expense and time to get things upgraded. Why bother? So I guess I'll just limp along for the next few year with an "old" OS. By the time I need a new laptop, the hardware and software incompatibility issues will surely have been worked out. And by then, maybe a MacBook (or even a Linux machine) will be even more compelling.

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

You didn't think a Windows rollout was going to go smootly?If you want to upgrade from XP Pro to Vista Home Pre you can't do an in place install (keeping your files inplace) but you can when upgeading to Vista Bus, and the reverce goes for Media Center.The driver issue is going to be even worce for people who want to run X64.First of all only ultimate includes X64 in the box, every other virsion you will need to register with MS and get it mailed out to you.Then you just have to prey your manufacturer has gotten off their ass and made a second driver set for X64.If you want a truly stable Win stick with XP till SP1 comes out or at least give Vista a couple of months to work all its bugs out.At my store we managed to stuff up Vista so much in just over an hour thyat we had to reset the PC back to factory settings and that was using the MS supplied demo software.

on a long enough timeline the survival rate of everyone drops to zero

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

Sounds like a pretty good description of installing Linux a few years ago.

And it's a pretty good description of installing Linux today.

Granted, it's fairly straightforward to install many Linux distros now (Ubuntu, SuSE, Xantro etc) but actually getting them up to the same level of functionality as Windows or OS X is still a very uphill task.

I consider myself as an advanced computer user. Over the years I've become quite adept at both Windows and Mac OS X. I've been dabbling with Ubuntu and Xubuntu, some of the easiest distros to install and configure. My experience is when one thing is upgraded or installed it tends to break functionality elsewhere. I've spent a lot of time typing commands into the terminal and looking for solutions in the disorganized chaos that is the Linux community. I've implemented those solutions but heaven help those without a broadband connection or spare time to fix their computers!

Therefore I've come to the conclusion that all this talk of Linux making significant inroads into the desktop is just fanboy fantasy. Linux will only start being a major threat to the desktop market share when there is a Linux distro as easy to use, maintain, configure and support as Windows or Mac OS X.

Most computer users freak at the idea of entering computer commands into a command line console. If people were happy with this concept then Windows and the Mac OS would never have taken off; we'd still be using MS-DOS now. Yes, Linux has its GUI but all too often one has to resort to the Terminal in order to get anything configured properly. This is unacceptable for most computer users.

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

Chia, good/fair asessment. Linux has a lot of really great stuff, but if a person wants to go beyond the basic install, there is a significant learning curve, and they still need to get used to using the terminal. There are however a lot of people in the world for whom the basic install would be very adequate, and the situation is improving. Comparing my latest Ubuntu install (and usage) to what I was trying to do even three years ago is a huge step forward.

Re: SV's comment, click on the link in my tagline. But be forewarned, it is a long read.

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

The sad part of all of this is that I of my three primary personal PCs (main desktop, backup desktop, laptop) I was going to make the laptop the guinea pig for Vista since it's quite new (<6 months old), quite powerful and not a mission critical piece of equipment for me at this time.

My backup PC doesn't get used all that often and it's got older hardawre in it that's not optimally Vista-compliant (P4 CPU, 1gb RAM, older video card etc). I'll probably make this the new guinea pig system if something doesn't happen on the laptop front by next week. This is also the machine I'll be doing my Palm Desktop Vista testing on (hopefully).

My main PC, despite having been built with an eye on Vista compliance last year, is far too critical for work & play purposes to have any downtime while I sit around waiting on laggard companies to write Vista drivers. So it's gonna stay XP for the forseeable future.

I *only* do clean installs each and every time I do an OS install. With THIS many problems with Vista clean installs I'd hate to be on th receiving end of a upgrade install gone bad.

Heck, I'd even pay Lexmark or HP a few bucks for rock solid drivers for my printers/scanners that worked under Vista. The more I think of it, this whole driver fiasco situation is basically M$ and the big PC retail OEMs (and, especially, the peripheral makers) in cahoots to try to resuscitate a moribund personal computer hardware market that's gone flat as people put their $ into game consolses, GPS units, flat panel TVs, iPods etc. Want to use your 1 year old $250 printer under Vista? Naah, just buy this throwaway $50 inkjet instead so you can "get" working drivers.

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

Yep, if by supplying you with the drivers for your old hardware they lose your purchase of a new piece of equipment, they lose money. It's not personal; it's just business. Of course they have to walk the line and try not to enrage their customer base in the process. But I'm thinking that other than in some attempt to redirect the blame, you probably aren't going to hear a hardware manufacturer complaining about Vista not supporting their "legacy" hardware. Support for legacy hardware might be advantageous to MS (you might be more inclined to purchase Vista if you know it will support your old hardware?), but I don't see how it is advantageous to hardware manufacturers.

Incidentally, one of the more compelling points about Linux for some is it's continued support for "legacy" hardware. That may be of no interest whatsoever to people living on the edge, but it's a great way to keep otherwise "old" hardware still productive.

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

I'm curious what reasons people have for wanting to use Vista. Even if I ignore some of the complaints I've read about it and only consider the new features, I haven't seen anything that makes me say "I gotta have that." This isn't a rant against Microsoft, just a question for people who are interested in Vista: what's the big deal?

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

Well, first of all, I am curious to see how Vista handles gaming. DX10 is exclusive to Vista. My preferred gaming platform is still PC. Unfortunately, the PC games industry has mostly splintered into two basic camps: lame "casual" games and big "event" titles. And a pretty solid number of "event" games in '07 are going to use mixed DX9/10 code, with Halo 2 being the first of sure-to-be-many DX10 exclusive titles.

Secondly, there's still a few of hiccups in XP as far as dual core support and the fairly frequent hiccup with certain USB peripherals and notebook power management etc. From what I've seen so far of Vista, all of those issues are addressed. For what it's worth, on my Core Duo T2300 laptop with 2gb of DDR and a 5400rpm 120gb SATA HD, Vista boots faster than the same exact unit with a clean install of XP Home SP2. That's something worth noting! Even in its hobbled mode of only the default Vista drivers, my notebook finally is working reliably switching between several differnet wireless networks (a mix of unsecured, WEP and WPA) and going into standby/sleep mode etc.

I'm also very intrigued by Vista's support for stuff like ReadyBoost/ReadyDriveand SuperFetch technologies. Basically, much, much better memory management than we've had before. There seems to a bit more disk usage when launching programs or whatnot but the HD never thrases when the machine is idle or you are doing rudimentary stuff. And the integrated Media Center functionality will come in handy whenever I splash out for a 1080p TV down the road.

For the record, the "excessive hardware requirements" talk for Vista has been blown waaay out of proportion. While I wouldn't recommend anyone even think about running Vista in AeroGlass mode with all of the bells & whistles turned on without having a fast single core (3ghz+) or dual core CPU, 2gb of RAM, and a decent 128mb+ DX9 compliant video card with SM 2.0 support (think Radeon 9500 or GeForce 6200 at minimum).

But for "basic" Vista, you're fine with a 2ghz+ CPU, a gig of RAM, and a fast 7200rpm HD. Throw in a fast USB drive for ReadyBoost to help the system memory out and you're all set.

I think a lot of the talk about excessive hardware requirements for Vista was just FUD spread by the resellers/OEMs/mom'n pop system builders to sell NEW systems. In fact, it's the DIY guys like myself who are getting screwed left & right here. Why can I go buy an Acer laptop TODAY with Vista pre-loaded on it but their flagship models from a few months ago are left out in the cold?

Again, the utter lack of drivers for high-end hardware on store shelves TODAY is apalling. Matrox and ATI have always been fantastic about supporting older hardware & chipsets and their track record continues to this day. That's why I've bought dozens of ATI Radeon cards since 2001 and recommend/influenced the purchase of hundreds more.

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

This is what I hate about the PC world. When Windows gets upgraded, vendors abandon their products. I was once very interested in a wee scanner put out by a Japanese company. Ran under Win95. When I wanted to actually buy it, we were at Win98 and the vendor said, Nope! No 98 drivers for you! Scanner EOLed. B*st*rds. IIRC, I never had such problems when I was using a Mac... (but keep in my mind my last Mac use was System 6!).

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

SV: I have always had the impression that you are much more...ahem, "learned and possessing veteran experience" than most others here on PIC. Sometimes it'd be nice to have those old 4mhz days back, huh?

Mike Cane;

Truer words were never spoken. And scanners and printers are ESPECIALLY prone to abandonment due to OS shifts. We recently cleaned out a storage closet in our building and uncovered a PILE of really high-end HP/Umax/Canon SCSI/USB/Firewire scanners. The ones that do slides, transparencies, the whole works. All of them were bought from, say, '99 to '02 and all were rendered useless (or close to it) by the arrival of XP.

Then on the floor next to that shelf were some higher-end multifunction machines (laser & inkjet) of the time in addition to a few higher-end business Deskjets--the kind that do 2-sided printing or were wide format printers. None had survived the Win 2k ---> Win XP upgrade with anything more than the rudimentary Windows built-in driver.

I think the world (myself imcluded) got spoiled because Win XP lasted 5 + years (Oct '01 to Jan '07) so everyone just ASSUMED that everything bought this year would work next year. Prior to that we had only 2.5 years between 95 and 98 and ~2 years between 98 and Win Me(ugh) and Win 2k.

I'm just in an especially hard spot b/c I've bought and recommended purchases of quite a bit of hardware in the past 12 months and much of it isn't Vista compliant now nor does it look like it ever will be. Now the legion of friends/family/coworkers/acquaintences I do tech support for are going to be really miffed when their Vista upgrade kit comes in the mail.

P.S. All of the Mac people I work with and know all like Vista, at least superficially. I think the ONLY way you'd convince a diehard Mac guy to use a Wintel machine at work would be to stick Vista on it.

P.P.S. I had a wicked thought last night before I fell asleep--what if Palm is going to use this twice per decade OS paradigm shift to essentially abandon all prior products? That is, everything produced prior to the E2 or so.

They could release a new version of Palm Desktop that runs on the E2, TX, Z22, 700p, 680 but not on any of the older legacy hardware. They could blame Microsoft and nicely wash their hands of all of the "old" stuff (including the LifeDrive and the T5 and their drive modes). Heck, they could even jettison support for POS PDAs entirely in Vista if they wanted!

Pointing the finger at Vista would give them the perfect opportunity to essentially start over with a clean slate and redo Hotsync/Palm Desktop from the ground up while they keep hacking away at Garnet.

WAY-OT Now: RE: Why aren't I surprised?

Though somewhat disassembled, I still have that machine. 60KBytes "now" though (4 Kbyte for the PROM (disk boot loader plus more - wrote it myself...in machine, not Assembly, language!)), 2 8" floppy drives, MASSIVE transformer-based power supply, etc etc etc.

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

Now the legion of friends/family/coworkers/acquaintences I do tech support for are going to be really miffed when their Vista upgrade kit comes in the mail.

Why are they all upgrading? Honestly, why? I have never figured out the "drive" to upgrade to the "latest and greatest" when most users haven't even figured out how to get the most out of their current system and, other than looking at all that new eye-candy, won't use the additional features of the new system anyway. And I do understand that you personally might have a very good list of reasons, but really, do all those "legion" of people really have any compelling reason to upgrade? Why not just wait until there is some compelling reason to buy a whole new hardware system and then get the newest OS bundled and presumably stable because the manufacturer designed it to be that way and enough time has passed for someone else to get the bugs worked out. Think of the hours/days of life you could recoup if you didn't have to work it all out for those legion people.

Quick, while there is still time, put out an email and tell those legion of people that if they needlessly choose to upgrade to Vista in spite of your warnings that they are on their own and you will not provide them with tech support because you have a life to live outside of all of this illusion of progress. ;-)

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

Me being the eternal cynic, I suspect how quickly device drivers are updated to Vista depends on how many of the products are still sitting on the shelves or in the warehouse. Maybe it's better for firms to start charging for updated drivers for older hardware rather than stuff being binned for want of a driver.

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

Q: Are you bugged by the Apple commercial where John Hodgman is the PC, and he has to undergo surgery to get Vista?

A: I've never seen it. I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are.

Q: How about the implication that you need surgery to upgrade?

A: Well, certainly we've done a better job letting you upgrade on the hardware than our competitors have done. You can choose to buy a new machine, or you can choose to do an upgrade. And I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it’s superior. I don't even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it.

Q: Does the entire tenor of that campaign bother you, that Mac is the cool guy and PC—That’s for my customers to decide.

Q: In many of the Vista reviews, even the positive ones, people note that some Vista features are already in the Mac operating system.

A: You can go through and look at who showed any of these things first, if you care about the facts. If you just want to say, "Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along," that's fine. If you’re interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is. I mean, it’s fascinating, maybe we shouldn't have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine. So, yes, it took us longer, and they had what we were doing, user interface-wise. Let’s be realistic, who came up with [the] file, edit, view, help [menu bar]? Do you want to go back to the original Mac and think about where those interface concepts came from?

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

LOL, thanks for the link. Now if someone would just sue the pants off of HP, Lexmark and all of the other lagggard peripheral manufacturers we'd be getting somewhere...

I think the basic point here is that Nvidia got complacent and figured their (for the moment) superior hardware equated to a clear victory over ATI. And Nvidia never really has (IMO) given their chipset/motherboard users the same respect given to their video card users. You DO realize that as of today Intel has NO Vista drivers for ANY of their nForce chipsets other than some alpha drivers dated July '05 for the Nforce 3 series? That's just sickening.

I currently have a single NForce-based Athlon 64 system that's being built for someone that wanted to put Vista on it. So I am carefully watching the situation to see how Nvidia reacts on the driver issue. I'm just glad I played it safe & have Intel-based machines personally.

In ATI's favor, they've historically been much better about older product support. Their regular monthly Catalyst driver updates are simply amazing, especially if you get the newest games that come out and encounter "issues" that need fixing ASAP.

Also, ATI moved to a .NET based control panel driver interface well over a year ago. That helped them be ready for the Vista transition far in advance of Nvidia in regards to their video drivers.

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

>>>P.P.S. I had a wicked thought last night before I fell asleep--what if Palm is going to use this twice per decade OS paradigm shift to essentially abandon all prior products? That is, everything produced prior to the E2 or so.

In effect, they have already done that. My OS 4 CLIE's PIM DBs are incompatible with the OS 5 DBs stranded on my desktop after the death of a TE. In other words, I can't sync that stuff back into the CLIE, dammit.

I wish to hell they'd just DO A NEW OS already. I'd live with obsoleting all existing 3rd-party software as long as the new OS could kick some serious a**.

RE: Why aren't I surprised?

>In effect, they have already done that. My OS 4 CLIE's PIM DBs are incompatible with the OS 5 DBs stranded on my desktop after the death of a TE. In other words, I can't sync that stuff back into the CLIE, dammit.

Stick with MS Outlook. Virtual Monopolies and Standards MATTER. This way, when companies like Palm and Sony shit the bed, MSFT will be there to pull your ass out of the fire.

RE: Temptation for PIC's Resident Lizard

WAY-WAY-OT: RE: Temptation for PIC's Resident Lizard

They obviously have no idea how oil is bought, sold, and/or transported.

============

If you're an oil trader you buy oil before it is pumped out of the ground. It then gets set on its way to you, let's say via pipeline. Before it gets completely through that pipeline to the "other side" you have sold it to someone else. Sometimes you buy oil coming out of a pipeline. Since it's of a certain composition it goes into that "certain composition" holding tank before getting loaded onto a ship, say. You sell it again to someone else. Other oil from God-Knows-Where also gets loaded into that holding tank. As it comes out of that tank and gets poured into the ship, you buy it. The ship leaves port for your destination. You find a buyer in Norway, however, so you sell the load and the ship diverts toward Norway. Somewhat later oil futures and your special financial modeling software suggest you should buy it back and ship it to Brazil, so you do so and the ship diverts to Brazil. As it's approaching Brazil you sell the ship contents to a broker who handles New Orleans arrivals; the ship diverts there and offloads into some holding tanks of a "certain composition" that contain oil already from God-Knows-Where. The oil of a certain composition enters a pipeline and moves across country to the refinery where it enters holding tanks for "certain compositions" that already, of course, have other content; those tanks are next to other tanks that also contain similar "certain compositions" from God-Knows-Where. The broker sells that oil to someone else. The refinery converts the oil into its byproducts and that someone else sells the refined products to another broker who handles refined product trading in Northern Virginia. Let's say refined gasoline then enters a cross-country pipeline to the Fairfax, Virginia fuel depot. As it's traveling through the pipeline the political environment changes and oil prices plummet. The broker sells the gas to someone else. The gas arrives at the fuel depot and enters holding tanks along with other gas that's already there from God-Knows-Where. Tank trucks from all the major gas stations line up to fill up with gas. Somewhere prior to the gas pouring into each tank truck special additives are added to make the fuel brand-specific. The trucks leave for the gas stations or fuel depot substations where it is mixed with similar gas from God-Knows-Where.

Terror-free indeed.

RE: Temptation for PIC's Resident Lizard

The ship leaves port for your destination. You find a buyer in Norway, however, so you sell the load and the ship diverts toward Norway...so you do so and the ship diverts [back] to Brazil. As it's approaching Brazil you sell the ship contents to a broker who handles New Orleans arrivals; the ship diverts there

It's expensive for a container ship to make one diversion, never mind several diversions by a much heavier oil tanker. I'm skeptical as to whether any slight fluctuation in oil price is enough to offset the cost of a tanker making a major diversion or several diversions. Ships guzzle down fuel like there's no tomorrow and the oil tankers can't just refill from their cargo!

i know how to get it working

hello all, 1 first you have let the program thru your firewall and make an exceptioon there,very important.2dont install the beta verson at least i didnt i installed version 4.0 palm desktop. set up the hotsync manager to at least recognize the pda, try to hotsync still problems?as i suspected like i had various errors.3 bring up the hotsync screen on your pda up on top the screen where it reads hotsync touch there with your stlus and down comes another menu, here is all the important stuff from here set up your modem sync preferences , conduit setup and connection setup etc.4. it hotsyncs now as my has done since i figured it out about 5 minutes ago. hope this helps everyone as i was going to bite the bullet and buy a windows mobile pda.why couldnt palm or microsoft figure this out and tell us . i think microsoft wants everyone to buy their equipement and palm the same with their devices.

happy hotsyncing

i almost forgot please read

i almost forgot as i was determined to fix this for all the months it wouldnt work even staying up way late.

when installing the palm software choose somewhere like documents to save the program , some versions you have to chose custom install to do this, INSTALL ANYWHERE EXCEPT PROGRAM FILES i picked this up on a blog somewhere that is another main key in it working .

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